Monday will be a sad day for Continental fans. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Continental and United will announce that they are planning to merge on Monday.

The United name will survive, as will their headquarters in Chicago. The merger will create the largest airline in the world if it passes regulatory muster.

A merger will mean means higher fares and one less option to rely on for award ticket availability.

Frankly, there’s little I like about United.

Granted, I haven’t flown them since I swore off them 2 years ago, but still…

-They have an incredibly incompetent offshore call center that makes dealing with their phone agents a nightmare.

-United.com is one of the worst and least functional websites in the industry, far behind the functionality on Continental.com.

-Their clubs aren’t nearly as good as Continental’s. Alcohol cost money in United clubs, Wi-Fi is run by T-Mobile instead of an open network, and pests are common occurrences in many United clubs.

-Their planes are dirty and poorly maintained (Via airliners.net, taken on 03/18/10):

-Their employees seem to be truly unhappy to be working there, many are downright surly.

-They have evil Starnet blocking in place that doesn’t allow you full access to Star Alliance partner award flights, even if they are made available for reward redemption. No other airline does this.

-United doesn’t let you make any changes to Star Alliance tickets after departure and charges for routing changes on award tickets. Continental allows you to always make changes and does not charge for routing changes.

Yes, there are some good things, economy plus, no expedite fees on rewards, but for me the bad far outweighs the good.

My only hope is in the fact that Continental’s CEO, Jeff Smisek, will become the new CEO of the merged airline while United’s CEO, Glenn Tilton, will become Chairman for 2 years before also giving that role to Smisek.

If Continental’s management team will be calling the shots maybe this thing will have a chance to be bearable.

Finally, I see little hope for Cleveland to remain a hub. Continental and United currently have hubs in:

-Chicago (ORD)

-Cleveland

-Denver

-Houston

-Los Angeles

-Newark

-S. Francisco

-Washington (IAD)

There is a compelling argument to keep pretty much all of those hubs in place except Cleveland. United already abandoned their hub in Cleveland hub back in 80’s. I’ll bet that United ditches Cleveland once again if this merger is completed.

This was $32.99 yesterday and is now the lowest price ever from Amazon. It has excellent 4.8 star reviews.

This is one of my favorite board games out there and it has similarly awesome reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players. While I’m a huge Settlers Of Catan fan (don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers), that game requires 3 players, 1-2 hours of time, and often leads to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Ticket To Ride Europe combines a high level of strategy in a game that can be played with just 2 people or as many as 5 people in under 1 hour. And it doesn’t end in people giving each other the silent treatment 😀

This is a record low price from Amazon for the current edition of Catan.

Settlers Of Catan is one of the best board games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Note that only some games qualify for this promotion. Be sure you are buying it directly from Amazon and that it shows that it qualifies for buy 2, get 1 free when you scroll down the product page under the special offers section:

If it doesn’t say that then the promotion won’t work for that item.

No code is required, the lowest priced game of the 3 will be free at checkout:

Included in this sale are 2 of my favorite board games:

–Settlers Of Catan is on sale for a record low $29.75 and also qualifies for buy 2, get 1 free. This is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Note that Catan is is a 3-4 player game. You get buy this expansion pack to make it a 5-6 player game as well, but the expansion pack is not part of the buy 2, get 1 free promotion.

-Ticket To Ride Europeis on sale for just $32.99 and also qualifies for buy 2, get 1 free. It has 4.8 star reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players and it’s well deserved. It’s a great strategy game as well and it can be played with just 2 players, unlike the 3 required for Settlers. Plus as a bonus: Less fighting!

This is a record low price from Amazon for the current edition of Catan.

Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

This was selling for $39.41 from Amazon last week and is now an excellent price. The current edition has never been sold for less than $31.24 from Amazon.

Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

At any rate, I’d like to tackle a couple of common questions with the Sapphire Reserve.

People often ask me about the $75 additional cardholder fee. And it’s true, this is indeed a disadvantage compared to Sapphire Preferred which has free additional cardholders.

Both myself and my wife signed up for our own Sapphire Reserve cards, so we have no need for an additional user card. It was a no-brainer for both of us to signup. In our first cardmebership year (August 2016-2017) we’ll pay $900 in annual fees, but we’ll get a total of 200,000 bonus points that are worth at least $3,000 of travel credit (though likely much more than that by transferring those points into miles). Additionally we’ll get $1,200 in automatic travel refunds for airfare, car rentals, hotels, Airbnb, campgrounds, cruises, trains, buses, subways, Uber, Lyft, taxis, limos, ferries, bridges, tolls, E-ZPass, parking, and more. You can even buy airline or hotel gift cards or just prepay your E-ZPass account to trigger the credit. The $1,200 is made up of $300 in credits on each of cards in 2016 and then another $300 of credits on each card in 2017.

Chase even awards 900 points for that $300 in spending despite it being refunded. That’s another 3,600 in bonus points on free spending between our 2 cards, good for at least $54 in free flights.

Between our 2 cards that’s a minimum of $4,250 in travel credit in our first cardmembership year. That’s well worth paying $900 in annual fees. And that’s not even counting the triple points on travel and dining, the Priority Pass lounge membership, the 5 year Global Entrymembership, and the ability to redeem all Chase points for 1.5 cents towards travel, including on cards like Freedom Unlimited where you earn 1.5 points per dollar everywhere (effective 2.25% minimum rebate everywhere) or Freedom/Ink cards that can earn 5 points per dollar (effective 7.5% minimum rebate in select categories).

The reason that Sapphire Reserve has a $75 additional cardholder fee is to cover the primary Priority Pass membership that each additional cardholder receives. With Chase’s Priority Pass membership you can bring unlimited guests with you into the lounge for free.

If your additional cardholder travels with you then it’s not worth paying the $75 as they can enter as your guest. But if they travel by themselves it can make sense to pay the $75.

Previously 2 Chase online SM reps and a phone rep told me that additional cardholders would also qualify for Global Entry credits, but it turns out that is not the case.

If you just need an extra Sapphire Reserve card for travel and dining spending you can get a duplicate card by just calling Chase and asking for an extra metal or plastic version of the card.

Or if you still have the old Chase.com interface you can request a replacement card online. I have 2 Chase logins, 1 only has my personal accounts and has been upgraded to the new interface. The other login has both my personal and business accounts and still uses the old interface. After logging in to an account with the old interface just click on “Customer Center” and then “Card replacement:”

I haven’t been able to find that option in the new Chase.com interface.

I now have 2 identical Sapphire Reserve cards in my name that both work, no $75 fee required. Even if a store asks for ID, Visa does not allow a store to refuse to swipe your credit card if you refuse to show it…

Another common question is whether it’s worth keeping the Sapphire Reserve for subsequent years.

Chase has done a good job making a strong value proposition to keep the card despite its $450 annual fee.

My 2nd cardmembership year will run from August 2017-2018. In 2018 I’ll get another $300 in travel credits. Chase also awards 900 points for that $300 in spending, so that’s $313.50 of annual credit.

The credit will apply in every subsequent cardmembership year and it makes the effective annual fee just $136.50 per year. That’s only $41.50 per year more than Sapphire Preferred and is a bargain considering what you get for that.

If you spend $233 per month on travel and dining you’ll already pay for that difference in the annual fee thanks to the 3 points per dollar awarded with Sapphire Reserve compared to 2 points per dollar with Sapphire Preferred. That level of spending means an extra 2,800 annual points that are worth at least $42 thanks to the minimum 1.5 cents per point travel redemption value if you have a Sapphire Reserve card.

Of course the additional benefits are much more than just the extra point per dollar. You also get the lounge membership with unlimited guesting, the Global Entry credit every 4 years, and the ability to use all of your Chase points for 1.5 cents each towards travel.

As always you can transfer points to someone else in your household, so if one person in the household uses cards like Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, and Ink to earn between 1.5-5 points per dollar everywhere they can transfer those points to the another person in the household who has a Sapphire Reserve to transfer into miles or use at a value of 1.5 cents each. And you even can get extra Sapphire Reserve cards to earn 3 points per dollar for travel and dining purchases without paying the $75 annual fee as shown above.

I’m just hoping that these levels of benefits will be sustainable despite the mainstream media coverage…

Note that only some games qualify for this promotion. Be sure you are buying it directly from Amazon and that it shows that it qualifies for buy 2, get 1 free when you scroll down the product page under the special offers section:

If it doesn’t say that then the promotion won’t work for that item.

No code is required, the lowest priced game of the 3 will be free at checkout:

Included in this sale are 2 of my favorite board games:

–Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Note that Catan is is a 3-4 player game. You get buy this expansion pack to make it a 5-6 player game as well, but the expansion pack is not part of the buy 2, get 1 free promotion.

-Ticket To Ride Europe has awesome reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players and it’s well deserved. A great strategy game as well and it can be played with just 2 players, unlike the 3 required for Settlers. Plus as a bonus: Less fighting!

I grew up listening to stories of Cleveland sports glory from my maternal grandfather. Nobody else could really talk about it as it has been generations since Cleveland has won a major league level championship.

And yet, Cleveland remains a die-hard sports town. Even when locals move away from the easy-going lifestyle of the midwest to far pricier pastures, they still remain devoted to the local sports teams through the thick and thin of it all. It’s hard to kill hope.

Back on May 8th when the Cavs swept the Hawks, I booked saver award tickets on United to fly nonstop from Cleveland to San Francisco on June 19th for a day trip with my grandfather in anticipation of a game 7 there. If there was going to be a championship in my lifetime I was going to see it in person with my own 2 eyes and have a ticket stub to prove it. And what better way than to bring my grandfather, the man responsible for my love of sports, along for the ride.

They will also copy United in adding a 75K elite tier in 2017 unimaginatively named “Platinum Pro.” American requires that Gold and Platinum members earn or purchase upgrades on flights longer than 500 miles, but Platinum Pros will receive complimentary upgrades as Executive Platinums do today.

Effective in 2017 American will also require minimum spend requirements to earn elite status that will exactly mirror United’s policy. $3K for Gold, $6K for Platinum, $9K for Platinum Pro, and $12K for Executive Platinum. Delta and United have waivers of those requirements if you spend $25K on their co-brand credit card (though United won’t waive the spend requirement to earn 1K status), but American didn’t announce any waivers as of yet.

Delta and United also waive the spend requirements if you live abroad, but American didn’t announce any waivers for that either.

Million milers will be devalued as there is a new tier of elites on top of each of them that receive complimentary upgrades. Additionally next year upgrades will be prioritized by how much you have spent in the past 12 months on American flights, so million milers who don’t qualify based on spend will be pushed even further down the totem pole.

I find that United has far better award availability (especially if you have their credit card), has far more generous routing rules, and still allows valuable free stopovers on awards, making them a better airline for accumulating miles. If you want to fly on American you’ll do better by focusing on partners like Alaska and British Airways for mileage accumulation and redemption.

American has managed to take the worst of USAirways and American to become a truly bumbling airline, worst overall, worst in cancelled flights, and worst in mishandled baggage:

Their mileage program was still lucrative until recently, so they’ve managed to devalue that from all sides as well.

Will American’s changes affect your preferred choice of airline to fly on or accumulate miles with? Hit the comments!

No code is required, the lowest priced game of the 3 will be free at checkout. Be sure you are buying it directly from Amazon.

Included in this sale are 2 of my favorite board games:

–Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Note that Catan is is a 3-4 player game. You get buy this expansion pack to make it a 5-6 player game as well, but the expansion pack is not part of the buy 2, get 1 free promotion.

-Ticket To Ride Europe has awesome reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players and it’s well deserved. A great strategy game as well and it can be played with just 2 players, unlike the 3 required for Settlers. Plus as a bonus: Less fighting!

IRROPS is industry jargon for irregular operations, when delays or cancellations force you to be accommodated on another flight.

We’ve had a string of IRROPS flights running back to our last 4 transoceanic itineraries. Some would call that bad luck, but I’m definitely of the attitude that everything happens for a good reason. Some of them worked out better than can be imagined, others are still in the works, but here’s how we handled the IRROPS.

On the day of the flight I always use the airline’s website or flightaware.com to track the inbound segments of flights I’m going to take. Our Cleveland to Philadelphia flight was coming from Charlotte and Louisville before that. In the morning, those were showing on time, but about 5 hours before the flight, the flight from Charlotte to Louisville was delayed for mechanical reasons. I called USAirways, but as they didn’t post a delay yet for the Cleveland to Philadelphia flight there was nothing they could do.

Rather than play the waiting game at home we all packed into the car 4.5 hours before the flight to try our luck at the airport. On the way to the airport I got the automated phone call that the Cleveland to Philadelphia flight would be delayed. We called several USAirways and American agents, but they all said the same thing. As it was a mileage ticket the only thing they were allowed to offer was coach class on another airline or the next available USAirways flight to Tel Aviv in 6 days.

Airport agents always have more power than phone agents, so that’s what we were banking on.

Alas at the airport, the agent repeated the same thing, since we were on award tickets she was only able to rebook us on another airline in coach. Then the agent proceeded to tell me that the flight would be leaving Louisville for Charlotte shortly and would be able to get us to Philadelphia on time. The agent next to her overheard her say that and laughed, saying that there was no way that we would make our connection in Philadelphia.

Time to charm her.

“But we’ve been saving up these miles to fly in business class to Israel for years.”

OK, so it didn’t take me years to earn the miles, but for many years I had indeed been saving and waiting to use the miles to fly USAirways business class to Israel as it was the best seating option from the US to Israel, and I had already flown on Delta and United to Israel in business class. Finding enough business class seats on this flight for the whole family is extremely rare.

After going on a charm offensive she was ready to fight for us. She called her help desk who repeated the same story, but she went to bat for us. They wanted her to find another OneWorld option, but there was nothing that would work out of Cleveland that night. So finally they agreed to move the 4 of us to United. Luckily, we arrived at the airport early as that allowed us to catch United’s flight to Newark.

It’s actually pretty rare for United to have 4 empty business class seats to Tel Aviv just hours before the flight, but luckily for us one of the United flights to Tel Aviv the day before was cancelled, so they operated 3 flights to Tel Aviv on March 2nd. We were in coach to Newark, but got the all aisle access middle business class seats in rows 8 and 9 which were great.

Of course we didn’t have kosher meals, but New Kosher Special delivers $40+ orders to Newark airport free of charge, and they make some of the best Sesame and General Tso chicken around. I double wrapped some in tinfoil and the United flight attendants were more than happy to warm it up for us. BYOK FTW!

United actually found a kosher meal for us for breakfast.

We had some friends booked on our flight from Philadelphia to Tel Aviv and they had plenty of kosher meals due to us not making that flight 😀

We were booked in the middle of row 2 and 3 and they told us there was actually a large dog in row 1 in the middle. At the time Rafi was terrified of dogs, so the United flight actually worked out for the best.

OK, it reallyworked out for the best as we were booked into paid business class and each earned a boatload of miles:

At first we declared the trip in vainand were rebooked to go home early the next morning in order to get back to our families before Shabbos, as originally planned. But that night I made a phone call to my amazing wife who forbade me from coming home without snorkeling in Palau’s otherworldly Jellyfish Lake, and AJK refused to allow me to experience that without him. After some cajoling, United rebooked us to Palau and allowed a bonus 2 night stopover in Tokyo before flying home on Sunday.

United gave us 10K compensation miles and a couple hundred dollars in vouchers for the inconvenience, plus AJK also made out like a bandit with tens of thousands of Aegean miles due to being rebooked in revenue classes. Alas I tried crediting my ANA revenue first class flight to United and wound up with nothing…lesson learned!

We ran around the airport, from gate to gate, from club to club, and making phone calls trying to get re-accommodated after our American flight was delayed for mechanical reasons, but only Delta had 4 business class seats available that night and American refused to rebook on Delta due to the termination of their interline agreement.

When the lounge agent told us that our best shot at getting to London was running to another American flight and flying in coach, we did just that. Only to learn that first we had to personally go to baggage claim to recheck our bags as American’s policy was that their baggage agents couldn’t do that. The flight doors were closing, so there was no time to do that and we weren’t about to fly to London knowingly leaving our clothes, stroller, diapers, wipes, kids toys, and everything behind.

Back at the lounge the agents told us they confirmed with baggage that they reloaded our bags onto our original flight that was still awaiting a part being flown into LGA and then driven to JFK.

After waiting from 3 pm until after midnight our flight was cancelled. We accepted tickets on British Airways early in morning and turned down hotel vouchers. No point in shlepping to a hotel for a few hours with kids, we’d just get our bags and hang out at the gate. The lounge agents confirmed that our bags would be waiting for us.

They weren’t anywhere to be found.

American’s Twitter team promised me several times that an agent would come help us, but nobody ever showed up. After camping out the night in JFK agents arrived, but they still had no clue where our bags were. Rather than travel to London and arrive before Shabbos with no bags or stroller we opted to declare the trip in vain. American refused to book us on Delta from JFK, so we had to go to LGA to catch a flight home.

Our bags were discovered in Chicago 3 days later and returned to us. I still have no idea why they were sent to Chicago and why that information wasn’t scanned into their system. American reimbursed us for $147 of incidentals spent in the meantime.

An automated email apologized to all of the passengers on the cancelled flight and offered 20K miles each in compensation.

For reasons I don’t understand, we all got credit as if we flew the British Airways flight, despite the AA agent cancelling that ticket. That also triggered half of the transatlantic bonus, meaning we each got another 20K miles.

In the mess, Rafi left his tablet at the gate. Miraculously AA found it and I asked and was promised that it would be sent via Ground. AA sent it custom critical express and I wound up being charged $100 by Fedex. AA refused to reimburse that charge, but promised 10K miles to make up for it, though they have yet to post those miles.

AA refused to allow us to rebook the trip. I filed a DoT complaint but the DoT has been silent.

AAs Twitter team did have a customer service executive reach out to me, but she hasn’t fixed much.

They won’t compensate for anything more than the original 20K miles that all passengers on the flight automatically received. They won’t rebook the trip.

They did promise to work with BA so that I’d get a refund. 3 months later and I haven’t received a refund of the 30K Avios per person used for the tickets. They refunded $1,100 of the $1,784 used for the tickets, though I have no idea why they refunded that amount.

I nag AA’s Twitter team once a week for an update, and all they ever say is that it’s being worked on. Everyone seems completely unempowered to fix a thing.

Over 3 months after the incident I’m no longer holding my breath.

There’s a good reason American captured last place in the Wall Street Journal’s ranking of the airlines. They’ve managed to take the worst of USAirways and American to become a truly bumbling airline, worst overall, worst in cancelled flights, worst in mishandled baggage, a complete embarrassment:

Still trying to find the positive in this one, but I’m sure our families were happy to have us safe at home. The Paris terrorist massacre occurred on the weekend we were supposed to be in Europe.

———————————————————————————————————————–

4. Monday, January 25, 2016, United: CLE-EWR-HNL-LIH:

I nabbed lie-flat business class seats from Newark to Honolulu and back months ago. It’s a bargain award at just 30K Singapore miles or 40K United miles for a flight that’s nearly as long as Newark-Tel Aviv.

Then along came Jonas. I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know how bad.

But I wasn’t taking any chances. As soon as the monster predictions started coming in I nabbed 4 United Global First class saver award seats from Chicago to Honolulu on Thursday (These are 40K miles via Singapore or 50K miles via United). When I had previously searched this route it was operated with lame recliner seats in business class, but it had been switched to a 3 class international plane with lie-flat first and business classes. The same plane that will operated transcontinental flights over the next few months.

Newark-Honolulu didn’t have 4 seats available for another week after our flight, but I grabbed those as well.

And sure enough, United cancelled our Monday morning flight from Cleveland to Newark. The next available flight they were able to offer in business class was 1.5 weeks later.

Instead, I just had United cancel the flight and I used the backup that I booked. The agent was more than happy to open up award space back to Newark 2 days after our originally booked return flight due to the cancelled flight.

We had flown in Global First to Hawaii 2 years ago with carseats. Unfortunately, United installed shoulder seat belts in Global First in the meantime and the flight attendants would not let us use our carseats with them and downgraded us to business class while making 4 business class passengers very happy. That worked out OK though. United’s business class is an antiquated 2-4-2 configuration with alternate rows facing backwards and forwards. 4 seats aren’t ideal for most people, but it worked out well for our family of 4, probably even better than first class would have been for us. Plus, United refunded the extra 40K miles used for the difference between business and first class and awarded us with 35K miles and $600 in travel vouchers as compensation for being downgraded.

Overall, we were blown away by the service from United and by their excellent new kosher meals that they now serve from Hawaii. But more on that in the trip report…

Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Free shipping with $35+ orders or get free 2nd day shipping on all orders with Amazon Prime. A prime trial is free with Amazon Mom or Amazon Student.

Prime members get a $5.99 Prime Pantry credit if they select no-rush shipping at checkout.

This is one of my favorite board games out there and it has similarly awesome reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players. While I’m a huge Settlers Of Catan fan (don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers), that game requires 3 players, 1-2 hours of time, and often leads to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Ticket To Ride Europe combines a high level of strategy in a game that requires just 2 people, can be played in under 1 hour, and doesn’t end in people giving each other the silent treatment 😀

Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

No code is required, the lowest priced game of the 3 will be free at checkout. Be sure you are buying it directly from Amazon.

Additionally if you spend $100 before the free game is deducted, you can getthis teddy bear for free. Just add it to your cart and the bear will be free at checkout.

For example with 3 games and the bear, $19.99 is taken off for the bear as the 3 games totaled $100 before the promotion and then $35.79 is taken off for the free game, making the total for the 3 games and bear $71.58:

–Settlers Of Catan is one of the best games ever made and I’m a huge fan. Don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers. The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never the same as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours. Fair warning: It can lead to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Note that Catan is is a 3-4 player game. You get buy this expansion pack to make it a 5-6 player game as well, but the expansion pack is not part of the buy 2, get 1 free promotion.

-Ticket To Ride Europe has awesome reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players and it’s well deserved. A great strategy game as well and it can be played with just 2 players, unlike the 3 required for Settlers. Plus as a bonus: Less fighting!

“Hyatt Hotels is in talks to buy Starwood Hotels & Resorts in a deal that is said to be as little as a week away, sources told CNBC.

Under the cash and stock agreement, Hyatt management would retail control of the combined companies. Talks between the two companies have been going on for weeks.”

A cash and “points” redemption does seem apropos 😉

If the deal goes through it will have massive implications for mileage collectors. Some quick initial thoughts:

As Hyatt will be the acquirer it’s possible that their policies will become the future policies going forward.

But it’s more likely that we’ll see a hybrid of policies from both companies. Luckily there is more competition in the hotel industry than the airline industry, so I don’t see them picking the worst of both worlds as we saw happen in the Continental+United merger.

Undoubtedly we’d see a massive battle between AMEX and Chase for the rights to be the card issuer for the combined chain.

For the short term they may keep both issuers, but long-term they’ll likely pick just one. When American and USAirways merged Citi won the contract over Barclays, though Barclay cardholders still have grandfathered AA mileage earning credit cards. That’s not always the case though. When Delta and Northwest merged, USBank Northwest cardholders had their cards turned into FlexPerks cards.

When the banks pay more money to keep Hyatt though, it may increase the value that Hyatt gives to their points.

As it stands now Starwood Starpoints are more valuable than Hyatt points. That’s primarily because of the ability to transfer points into dozens of airlines at a 20K:25K ratio. But Starwood also offers 5 night free awards that are quite valuable as well.

Hyatt does have some advantages over Starwood though. Their ultra high-end hotels are far more affordable (the maximum rate is 30K points) than Starwood’s high-end hotels that can cost as much as 100K points for a night. Time will tell if Starwood’s high-end hotels become more affordable, if Hyatt’s high-end hotels get more expensive, or if they meet somewhere in the middle.

While Starwood used to have an awesome cash and points award chart, they devalued it a few years ago and now Hyatt’s cash and points award chart is more lucrative.

Hyatt’s top-tier elite program is more generous than Starwood’s thanks to suite upgrades that are confirmed at the time of booking and the ability to get a full breakfast, including a free catered kosher breakfast at many properties.

However Starwood has a far more attainable lifetime elite program (10 years Platinum and 500 nights for lifetime Platinum) than Hyatt does (10 years as a member and $200,000 spent in Hyatt hotels.) Which program will win out and how will those vastly different requirements be merged?

Mergers are rarely good for consumers. But I’m cautiously optimistic as Jeff Zidell, head of Hyatt’s Gold Passport program, has generally proven to understand that brand loyalty is a 2-way street. Hopefully he will manage to combine at least some of the best features that both programs bring to the table as cherry-picking the bad or just implementing Hyatt’s policies will just cause loyal elites to head for the exits.

Even if there are devaluations to the airline transfer program, there will almost certainly be a warning beforehand so that you will be able to transfer Starpoints into airline miles at their current favorable ratios.

What are your thoughts on the potential Hyatt takeover of Starwood? Hit the comments!

I get tons of free magazines and have been getting my daily Wall Street Journal fix for years for free via Rewards Gold. I alternate the name on the subscription between my family members.

The WSJ offer has become increasingly hard to find without logging in and taking a survey, so grab it while it lasts!

Don’t worry about how many “points” are required. Just select the subscription and click to continue.

It can take anywhere from 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

Please Note: If you want to avoid getting an error message and/or having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the links below.
Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.
Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.
Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.
Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.
Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)
Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.
Step 7: Wait between 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

-Click here to select from free subscriptions to Entrepreneur, Golfweek, US Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, Rolling Stone, People en Espanol, and more. Just leave the Rewards Gold password blank and click submit. Based on past experience you can go back and select all of the free subscriptions.

Bethune’s successor Larry Kellner ran a tight ship as well, but was forced out of Continental for not wanting to merge with United. And that’s what brought us Mr. Smisek, a merger that has benefited noone, and a sorry excuse for an airline:

Smisek promised “changes we were going to like” when he merged Continental with United. After years of devaluing both mileage programs, worsening the flying experience on both airlines, getting rid of free meals at mealtimes and special meals on almost all domestic routes in all classes, stripping free premium drinks out of clubs, closing hubs, and single-handedly ruining 2 once proud airlines, this is the first change that all Continental and United flyers can finally get behind. Good riddance Mr. Smisek!

5. Check back in 5-7 days for a credit.
The $0.01 software downloads I originally bought (and was credited for after 5 days) have been pulled from the site.

Unfortunately many items were from a seller called V-Top Trading and they forgot to include a shipping charge on their items. They have cancelled all of their orders and NewEgg provided a $5 code to affected customers as a gesture of goodwill.

Commenters confirm that the $10 credits are being reversed for cancelled orders.

For now, the least expensive items from NewEgg are $0.49, so you can make a $9.51 profit on each order.

Some downloadable items have a limit of 2 or 5 downloads per NewEgg account, so read the terms on the item’s page.

Downloadable items require a NewEgg login. To avoid errors on downloadable items it’s best to login to NewEgg from your cart rather than clicking on AMEX Express Checkout right away. After logging in to NewEgg and continuing to the payment screen you can then select AMEX Express Checkout and it should process without errors.

1. Buy a ticket to this test event for $5.25 ($1 plus a $4.25 processing fee) leaving a $4.75 profit per card.

2. I’m not going to speak on the ethics of booking up a free ticket to a movie that you don’t intend to use, but you can add a $5 donation on the page after selecting a free ticket, leaving a $5 profit per card.

Sports Authority’s search engine pulls up 2 versions of this same model, 1 for $399 and 1 for $799:

DD reader Eli W writes in that the $799 version had a $125 shipping fee earlier this week while the $399 version has just a $6.99 shipping fee. He bought the $399 version on Sunday and already has his shipment tracking number.

The WSJ offer has become increasingly hard to find without logging in and taking a survey, so grab it while it lasts!

Don’t worry about how many “points” are required. Just select the subscription and click to continue.

It can take anywhere from 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

Please Note: If you want to avoid getting an error message and/or having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the links below.
Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.
Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.
Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.
Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.
Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)
Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.
Step 7: Wait between 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

For example Ticket To Ride Europe is just $30.49, a record low price from Amazon. It’s one of my favorite board games out there and it has similarly awesome reviews on Amazon from hundreds of other players. While I’m a huge Settlers Of Catan fan (don’t judge me, so are the Green Bay Packers), that game requires 3 players, 1-2 hours of time, and often leads to some rather unpleasant fights 😉

Ticket To Ride Europe combines a high level of strategy in a game that requires just 2 people, can be played in under 1 hour, and doesn’t end in people giving each other the silent treatment 🙂

The terms say “Limit one $10 statement credit, per American Express online account, per merchant.”

But I like experimenting so I made several orders of $0.01 each from Newegg.

I used AMEX cards from the same online account as well as cards with their own account login. I also used primary and secondary cards from the same account.

Today I got a $10 statement credit on each AMEX card for every $0.01 order that I made, so it took just 5 days instead of the stated 90 days after the promo end to get the credit. And it worked for cards on the same online account.

While SBS 2014 for example actually required you to spend $30 to get back $30, this promotion allows you to spend any amount to get back a $10 statement credit! Plus it works at 11 different stores!

AMEX is introducing it’s own checkout option called Express Checkout. They are offering a free $10 statement credit for any purchase made from the following stores by 09/07. You can get a $10 statement credit from each of the stores.

-Offer ends 9/7/15.
-Limit one $10 statement credit, per American Express online account, per merchant.
-Offer only valid on orders shipped within the United States and its territories.
-American Express® Cards eligible for this offer are U.S. Consumer and Small Business Credit and Charge Cards.
-American Express Corporate Cards are not eligible for this offer.
-American Express Prepaid Cards are not eligible for this offer.
-Statement credit will appear on your billing statement within 90 days after 9/7/15

Seemingly there is no minimum purchase required to trigger the statement credit.
Additionally cards that have their own login should qualify for their own credit to each store according to the terms.

Please Note:If you want to avoid getting an error message and/or having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the link below.
Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.
Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.
Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.
Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.
Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)
Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.
Step 7: Wait between 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

But the United elite benefit downgrade was particularly painful for me. United inherited Continental’s shares system that assigned elite benefits to passengers that an elite member booked an award for.

As a United 1K I was able to book awards for people and they would be able to get free economy plus seating and 3 free 70 pound checked bags even if I wasn’t traveling with them.
As I also have a United credit card they were even eligible for upgrades starting 4 days before the flight.

It wasn’t uncommon for myself, my wife, and my 2 kids to all get free upgrades from coach awards.

This change even affected non-elites. If you had a United credit card previously the passenger would inherit your free bag. Now the passenger needs to have their own card to get a free checked bag.

As of April 15th United stopped applying those benefits to non-elite passengers. If the elite member isn’t traveling with them, passengers booked from an elite member’s account now have to pay for economy plus seating and for baggage. And upgrades are gone as well of course.

That hasn’t happened. Since the change Platinum and 1K members trying to redeposit an award on United.com for a non-elite passenger booked from the Platinum/1K account have been charged $200 even though there shouldn’t be any fee:

I noticed this right away and was able to redeposit an award over the phone for free. The agent said he had been getting calls all day from others in the same situation and he filed several reports to get the problem fixed.

“A relatively small number of our Premier members have been incorrectly charged redeposit fees for award tickets they’ve elected to cancel.”

That response was disingenuous at best. There isn’t a single report of an elite member not getting charged the non-elite rate when redepositing an award for a non-elite passenger when the elite member isn’t flying together with them.

The only reasons that it would be a “relatively small number” is that most elites probably called United to do the redeposit rather than risk the website charging them incorrectly. Or they’re waiting for the United.com to be fixed.

The irony here is that if this mistake was United.com not charging non-elites a redeposit fee you can bet that bug would be fixed the same day. A airfare price glitch would be fixed within minutes.

And yet, here we are nearly a month into this bug and nothing had changed. The cynic in me isn’t surprised that glitches in the airline’s favor rarely get fixed in a timely fashion. You would think that a glitch that affected top-tier elites would be a priority. At the very least they ought to roll back last month’s elite devaluation until they can implement the changes properly and stop overcharging their elite members.

While on the topic of errors on the passenger vs. the airline side of things, one of the worrying aspects of the DoT price mistake rule change is that a passenger only has 24 hours to let an airline know about their mistake (0 hours if you book on AA.com). Yet the DoT doesn’t hold the airlines to that same standard. At the very least the airline should have to let a passenger know about a mistake within the same 24 hour window. Otherwise we’ll have folks finding out that they don’t have a ticket when they get to the airport…

The new United.com launches this summer. I have zero faith in United being able to fix the problems with it that I identified in this post. Be prepared for it to be a lot more difficult to search for nonstop award flights.

This is an excellent price for one of the best board games out there. I highly recommend it!
The biggest advantage of it over traditional games like Risk or Monopoly is that you are forced to change your strategy every time you play as the board is set up randomly and is never identical as the last time. Plus it can be played in just 1-2 hours.

Ticket To Ride is another of my favorite board games. While I’m a massive fan of Settlers of Catan, the achilles heal of that game is that you need at least 3 players. Ticket to ride works perfectly with anywhere from 2 to 5 players.

Free shipping on $25+ orders.

Save an additional 5% off when you make this purchase with your Target REDcard.

It can take anywhere from 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

I get tons of free magazines and have been getting my daily Wall Street Journal fix for years for free via Rewards Gold. I alternate the name on the subscription between my family members.

Don’t worry about how many “points” are required. Just select your subscription and continue. None of these links require any survey to be filled out.

The WSJ offer has become increasingly hard to find without taking a survey, so grab it while it lasts!

Please Note: If you want to avoid getting an error message and/or having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the link below.
Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.
Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.
Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.
Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.
Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)
Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.
Step 7: Wait between 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

Please Note:If you want to avoid getting an error message and/or having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps in this exact order before clicking the links below.Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.

It can take anywhere from 2-14 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

Please Note:If you want to avoid getting an error message and/or having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the link below.
Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.
Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.
Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.
Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.
Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)
Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.
Step 7: Wait between 2-12 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

Please Note:If you want to avoid having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the link below.
Step 1: Open Internet Explorer.
Step 2: Click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting.
Step 3: Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change.
Step 4: Click on any of the links below to order your free subscription.
Step 5: Enable active scripting (the same way you disabled it in Step 2.)
Step 6: Fill out the 1 page form with your billing address and select the free subscription.
Step 7: Wait between 2-12 weeks for your subscription to start coming. You won’t get any email confirmation.

Note: If you want to avoid having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the link below. In Internet Explorer click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting. Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change. Then click on the link below to order your free subscription. Afterwards be sure to take the same steps to re-enable your active scripting.

If you want to avoid having to take a long survey to get the subscription you can follow these steps before clicking the link below. In Internet Explorer click on Settings>Internet Options>Security>Custom Level. Then scroll about 80% of the way down to “Scripting” and click on “Disable” under active scripting. Click OK at the bottom to confirm the change. Then click on the link below to order your free subscription. Afterwards be sure to take the same steps to re-enable your active scripting.

I get tons of free magazines and have been getting my daily Wall Street Journal fix for years for free via Rewards Gold. I alternate the name on the subscription between my family members.

After following the instructions above you will just enter your name and address, click on the free WSJ subscription, and submit the page. You won’t get any kind of email confirmation and there’s no need to verify your email address.

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the credit card offers that appear on this site are from credit card companies from which DansDeals.com receives compensation if you are approved. Compensation impacts placement of cards on the credit card page and banner placement, but does not on the articles posted on DansDeals.com. This site does not include all credit card offers available in the marketplace, but rather focuses on travel related cards.
Editorial Note: This content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. These responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Dan's Deals LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.